ARM posts record earnings for Q4 2013, profits up 19 percent

CHIP DESIGNER ARM has posted record earnings in its fourth quarter financial report, announcing revenue of £189m, up 15 percent from the same quarter a year ago.

The Cambridge based company also posted a 19 percent rise in pretax profit to £95.5m, which the company said exceeded market expectations.

For the full year ARM posted a 24 percent increase in revenues to £714.6m, growth that the company said was hight than in 2012. Pre-tax profit for the year surged 32 percent to £364m.

"ARM's strategy is for our technology to continue to gain share in long‐term growth markets, such as smartphones, tablets, enterprise equipment and embedded computing, and to increase the royalty percentage ARM receives from each device," the company said.

In the fourth quarter ARM signed 26 processor licenses for applications from smartphones and mobile computers to medical devices, wearables and the Internet of Things. The firm also claimed that its licensees shipped 2.9 billion chips, up 16 percent year on year, with faster growth in low‐cost chips in entry‐level mobile devices.

"ARM saw good progress in Q4 as our latest technology was chosen by major companies in all our target markets, with further licenses signed for our latest ARMv8‐A processors, Mali graphics processors and physical IP technology," the firm added. "These design wins will help to drive ARM's future royalty revenues."

ARM's top of the range Mali T760 GPU is targeted at devices at the top end of the market, and the firm touted "unmatched levels of performance" within constrained thermal envelopes associated with high-end tablets and smartphones. µ